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You know sometimes on a Friday all you want to do is crawl in bed. As you’re settling in for the afternoon thinking about what you’ll do for dinner one of your friends calls and convinces you to go out for a drink. So you grumble under your breath while you get dressed and do your make up and say yourself, “I’m going to stay out for max two drinks, and I’ll be in my flannel jammies by 8:30.” You drive downtown because uber is stupid expensive due to peak hours and think that driving will make it easier for you to sneak out early. And oh look, a princess parking spot in front of the bar!

You’re winning already.

You head upstairs, see your friends and think it’s a good idea to start with a gin and tonic (extra limes) because your friends have been drinking beer since noon and you kinda feel like you should catch up even though you’re going to stay out for max two drinks. More people start arriving and it turns out they work for your old company and so you start making all of the connections and someone asks you why your drink is empty and you order some water because you’re pacing yourself because you’ll have to drive home later. And then it’s time to order an orange crush and you are talking to your friend’s boyfriend and he asks what you’re drinking and when you tell him he tells you you’re “crushin it” and you can’t help but lolz.

That’s when he introduces you to the tall drink of water who just moved to the area a few months ago. He’s 33. He’s smart. He’s interesting. You casually sip your drink while you flirt with him for awhile. You’re introduced to other people who end up standing between the two of you so you move on and glance over every once in awhile and he keeps looking at you.

You’re finishing your drink and it’s time to go home. Some of your friends are getting ready to leave for another bar and you’re going to go ahead and go and then the tall drink of water asks, “are you coming?” as he’s being dragged out the door. Game time decision here. That’s when you say to your other friends, “let’s go for one drink.”

So you find yourself walking 10 blocks to the next bar and when you get there he’s saved you a seat and asks you if he can buy you a drink. Meanwhile you’re thinking, “what the fuck is happening and why the hell not?” Because when was the last time you went out to a bar, met someone who was cute and charming who wanted to buy you a drink and who you wanted to flirt with? You sit down and order the drink and he sits next to you. When two more seats become available he holds the seats and your friends try to cock block you and you say, “no, no, you sit here and I’ll move down,” so you can sit next to him.

You sit your ass down on that barstool and you order another drink. You find yourself talking about travel, and work, and family, and regrets, and basketball, and moving to a new city, and all sorts of stuff while he gazes at you with his blue eyes. You start talking about chess and find out he’s one of those guys who can read all the moves in advance and you ask him if he can do that in life and he tells you, “usually.” You wonder if he already knows how this is going to play out and if he’s calculating what moves he’ll make to get the outcome he wants. You ask yourself, “I wonder if he knows how old I am?” Obviously you look for an opportunity to drop it into the conversation and when you do he doesn’t blink an eye, he just goes with it.

Your other friends decide they’re going to leave, so only the two of you are left.

The Chess Player keeps gazing at you and he grabs your hands, and he gives you this look, and you ask, “what’s that look?” He responds, “I’m thinking about kissing you,” as he tugs your hands towards him and you lean forward. That’s when you start making out at the bar. In the middle of March Madness. Surrounded by people cheering on UMBC. It’s just the two of you. Suddenly it’s 10:30. You’ve been at the bar over three hours. Where did the time go?

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” he asks. You find yourself saying, “yes”. He picks up the tab and you walk the 10 blocks back to your car to drive to his place. You’re thinking, “am I really going home with this guy? Yes, yes I am.” When was the last time you went home with someone you met at a bar? Was it college? Shortly after, at least 10 years ago. A lifetime ago. Sure, you had an exceptional romp the night before – thanks to Tinder – but this is the type of chemistry real life has produced.

Why not just go with it?

You’re at his place. It’s pretty swanky. Incredible view of the city. Then you’re on the couch and your top is on the floor, quickly followed by just about everything else and he says, “we can always go in there,” gesturing to his bedroom. You hop off his lap and lead him into his room and crawl into his bed. There you proceed to lose every last stitch of clothing and remain for the next couple of hours.

When it’s done, he wraps his arms around you and you lay there and talk about work and whatever and nothing and he says, “you’re hot, you know that. Right?” You say, “thank you.” and think to yourself, “maybe I’m kinda decent looking if I’ve made out with four guys in eight days and ended up in various states of undress with each of them.” You ask him if he had played this out and calculated the moves it would take to get to his bedroom. He says, “yes.” He tells you he’d read the signals. There were only two options, yes or no, and the signals all pointed to yes.

He says, “you can stay.” You get up and get dressed, he asks for your number. You walk out. He texts you before you get to the car.

It’s 78 degrees on a hump day. Home from the gym and sitting on the porch. When I’m not taking a sip from my massive glass of wine (defeating the whole purpose of going to the gym), I’m busy swiping – typically left – on Tinder and responding to me text messages.

Must restrict my wine intake or may end up sending the right text message to the wrong guy.

I like to call this screenshot “Wednesday in February”. This has been going on since this morning. It’s been a rad fucking day.

You guys!! YOU GUYS!! That gif was totally me at the end of my date last night. Holy Lord almighty. Swoon. SWOON, you guys!! Are you swooning? I’m still swooning. I want to spend the entire day just melting and turning into a giant puddle on the floor. Then I’ll pick myself back up and melt all over the place again.

God bless, #4.

We met up at a restaurant near my house. I was early, as per usual, and was the only customer in the place. He walked in and I thought to myself, “hot fucking damn, he is fit as fuck.” He knows how to fill out a polo shirt. Looked way hotter than in his pictures. Like, I felt my ovaries beating hot. I had to restrain myself from asking him to father my children. He sat down and immediately faced the bar and I thought, “Fuck, he’s totes not into me.” Whatever, we’ll have a few drinks and then I’ll go home and line up the next date.

We drank, we ate, we talked politics, family, dating, traveling, pizza, drinks. I don’t know. We talked, and he was interesting, and smart, and funny. And I poked him in the arm and it was rock hard and then I thought, “stop touching him! He doesn’t like you,” because he was facing the bar. AND THEN he nudged my leg and I thought, “I’m going to touch his body.” And then we talked some more, and then I poked his arm again and my ovaries started beating again. And then he lodged his leg next to mine and my immediate impulse was to pull it away and I thought, “do not move your fucking leg. You will leave it there touching his.”

But then he asked for the check.

[SAD FACE]

It was a little after 7:30, we’d been there for 2 hours – I could have sat there for 2 more days. Okay, fine. Read all the signs wrong, clearly if he wanted to leave then that meant that he was over it. He was naturally charming, and was being polite in hanging out, and he was ready to go. And I was bummed. Then he said, “can I walk you home?” Obviously, I said yes.

So here’s this handsome, younger gentleman walking me home and I had that inner dialogue with my slutty self.

Slutty Self (SS): You should just sleep with him.

Rational Self (RS): Do not do that.

SS: Don’t you want to see him naked? Imagine what he looks like under that shirt?

RS: You playing the long game here, or do you want him to touch you all over and then never hear from him again?

SS: Is that a bad thing? Because look at him. Invite him in the house.

RS: Do not invite him in the house.

SS: Don’t you want to touch his peen?

RS: If you wait, maybe you can touch it more than once…

There we were on my porch and he was looking at the house, and I knew he wanted to come in – but I was not going to invite him in. Instead, he kissed me on the porch. I wanted to maul him. To climb him like a god damn mountain. I restrained myself. So he kissed me again, and my inner slut yelled to me, “you’re five feet from the couch, you could be on top of him in less than 2 minutes.” I thanked him for a good time, bid him adieu, and went into my house where I melted onto the couch.

Of course I needed to immediately start thinking, “WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NOW?? IS HE GOING TO CALL ME?? WHAT IF I NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN??”

Five minutes later he sent me a message in the dating app (because I hadn’t given him my number) thanking me for the date and saying even if I wasn’t sure about a 2nd date, that the kiss is something important to check out. I immediately wrote back and told him I had a great time and gave him my number. And in the first few official text messages he wrote, “You were as good a kisser as I imagined.” And that’s when I died. I am dead.

I mean, like, what? WHAT JUST HAPPENED??

Of course my head told me to take a deep breath and calm down, my throbbing ovaries were making plans for where we were going to do it, and my heart is making plans of its own. Here’s the thing: this (if there is a this) will be a casual thing. It will be nothing more than that. It will burn hot, and it will burn fast. We all know that the hotter the flame the faster it burns, and I need a slow burn. As much as I may want it to be more than casual, it will not be. So I’m going to keep going out there, and meeting other guys. The Tutor and I are going out again tomorrow. I will not get my hopes up (haha, who am I kidding?). I will let this play out.

And I’ll keep checking my phone to see when he’s going to respond to the text that I sent him this morning. It’s been 2 hours and he hasn’t responded. I’m never going to hear from him again.

Nothing says klassy get together like a Tea and Porn party. Back in the day, Tea and Porn parties were a weekly occurrence. Someone would bring the tea, someone would bring fancy biscuits and cheese, we’d lay out proper China, and someone would be responsible for bringing the porn.

When I tell people about the parties now, many of them – especially the dudes – imagine that the party would end up with a massive orgy after all the chicks got turned on and started making out with each other. I assure you, this was not the case. Most of us ended up going home bloated from all the cheese we ate and disgusted by what we had just witnessed on the TV. This wasn’t sexy-time, rather an opportunity for us to learn about all the disgusting things that could happen to you.

For example: “Debbie Does Dallas” taught me that if you get jizz in your eye it will turn red and it burns. I also learned that in the 80’s, no one shaved – I’m not sure why. In the early 90’s the girls would have massive fingernails and I’m sure caused internal damage when they diddled one another. That is not cool.

It was typically Claude who would score the porn with us. His mission “operation steal parents’ porn” brought us all sorts of interesting experiences. Though, sadly, the one I remember the most was the one that freaked everyone the fuck out. We were over at a friend’s house, it was her first time at one of our parties, and we popped the video into the VCR (that’s how long ago this was). Suddenly, we found a dude on his back starting to bend into himself as he dropped his peen into his own mouth. All the while there was a dude next to him coaching him along. We had to stop the video, and Claude was on the verge of tears knowing that his parents watched that kind of stuff. Hard to recover from that one. Thankfully, we had cheese, tea, and some 80’s porn flick to bring us out of it.

I miss those days. Not so much for the movies, I certainly don’t miss seeing all the facials (gag). You have to be super fucked up and/or addicted to drugs to think to yourself, “Yeah, it’s okay if 4 dudes cum all over my face at the same time.” Yeah, you know what? That’s not normal. So says the girl who misses Tea and Porn parties.

Halloween 2012 – post Sandy. There’s electricity in the house and my basement was spared an apocalyptic flood. Clearly I’ve done something right in my life. Or perhaps it was Karma’s way of telling me I’d suffered enough after having to sleep on the top bunks in Damien and Lucy(fer)’s rooms during the storm. You’d be amazed at how a hurricane doesn’t seem quite so bad after you’ve been trapped-with limited amounts of alcohol and chocolate-in the same house with your family for an extended period of time.

But alas, I digress.

Here we are on Halloween night. Due to the storm Trick or Treating has been postponed until Sunday. Which is kind of awesome for kids because they can play all stupid and go tonight and on Sunday. And they can go to the towns that have postponed to Friday, or Saturday or Monday – and they can fill their plastic pumpkins with loads of goodies. Thus giving birth to another generation of obesity).

What’s a girl to do?

Long gone are my days of dressing up like a white trash skank and getting hammered downtown. No more dressing up like a southern belle and doing body shots of Southern Comfort at 3:00 in the afternoon. Goodbye to the days of waking up on November first still wearing my vampire fangs and missing one shoe. And a very fond farewell to dressing up as a “bad influence” and handing out cigarettes or giving people shots of tequila. Those days are over now.

In my late 30’s, Halloween has a more sophisticated feel. Take tonight, for example. Picture this: me sitting on the couch, wearing sweatpants, watching “Lost Boys” while, eating all the good candy out of the bowl, and drinking wine?

The season is upon us! That time of year when we receive pictures of our friends with their children, each card carrying a message like, “Wishing you the best this holiday season” or “May your holiday wishes come true.” Gag. It’s the time of year when you walk into a friend’s house and you see the display of all of the cards they’ve received. The cards representing how popular they are. Gag. I have a confession to make: I’m a cold bitch. I don’t have such displays in my house. Yes, I’m popular, and I get the cards, but I display them in a different place – the garbage can. As soon as I’ve looked at the picture, read the message, those bad boys go straight to the trash. I know, I know, yet another reason I’ll get coal in my stocking. Whatever.

There is one thing I do get a kick out of, when my friends include those awkward holiday letters in the envelope. God, I love those. Talk about awkward! Either it’s someone bragging about how amazing her year was; bitching about how much it sucked; offering mundane details; or so full of spelling errors I want to whip out a red pen, circle all the offenses, and send it right back. I’ve often toyed with sending a christmas card to my friends. A picture of me on Santa’s lap along with a card summarizing my year. But when it occurs to me the cost of stamps would be the equivalent to the cost of a cocktail, I change my mind.